Sunday, 27 September 2015

I have been quiet; I was in New York. Have I mentioned before how kind and supportive the literary translation community is?

Before I even got to New York, I got a phone call to say that my accommodation with a friend of a friend had fallen through; a burst pipe and no water for the foreseeable. Within minutes, another translator had offered me her flat for the weekend – she needed a cat-sitter anyway. So many people said I was welcome to stay on their respective couches that I decided to see a few different parts of town, spending two nights each in Greenpoint, Kensington and Upper West Side (I think). And everyone looked after me beautifully. I had (half of) the most ridiculous ice cream sundae of my life, went up on a roof, drank sake in a basement establishment I'm sure I'd never find again, had pink iced tea, went to a Polish diner, bought Statue of Liberty biros, admired various views, got lots of advice, talked to strangers, gave away and was given lots and lots of books and generally had a very interesting time.

So this is to say thanks to the Goethe Institut New York and the German Book Office New York – and to all the translation people who calmed me down and made my stay in their city so full of love. You know who you are. For everyone else, here's a home-swapping website for translators. OK, not quite everybody else.

Wednesday, 16 September 2015

I was going to do a whole blog post on it but a) I'm the busiest I've ever been and b) the German Book Prize website is actually really good, even in English. So here's a link to the six-title shortlist. Go on, click on it. You know you're dying of curiosity. Three of my favourites are on it.

Tuesday, 15 September 2015

Natalie
Reinegger gets her first job after training as a special needs carer. She works
in an assisted living home for adults with learning and physical disabilities.
She's also the star of Clemens Setz's new 1022-page novel, Die Stunde zwischen Frau und Gitarre. It's already a much-celebrated phenomenon, with its own Twitter account by the name of Tausend Seiten Setz and a special team of readers commenting in real reading time at frau-und-gitarre. If I wasn't super busy I would be totally joining in, if they'd have me, because I have a helluva lotta time for Clemens Setz. If there's one writer that makes me regret giving up my going Dutch with German writers blog, it's Clemens Setz.

One of Natalie's personal clients is Alexander Dorm, a wheelchair-bound, bad-tempered
young man who is in love with a man called Christopher Hollberg. Dorm previously
stalked Hollberg, Natalie’s workmates explain, putting so much pressure on his
marriage that Hollberg’s wife committed suicide and Dorm was put into
psychiatric prison. Years have now passed and he now has only one visitor: Christopher
Hollberg. It is Natalie’s job to sit in on the meetings under their “arrangement”
to keep an eye on Dorm.

In Setz’s
world – which is very similar to a small Austrian town but not quite the same –
stalking is recognized as a cognitive disorder and the staff at the home treat
him as fairly as the other residents. Alongside her beloved job, Natalie has a
habit of “roaming” in dark corners at night to offer oral sex to strangers. She
comes across a basement “open space”, a cooperative bar where people meet to
talk, drink, hang out, play games and enjoy casual sex, and makes friends with
people there, developing a crush on a boy called Mario, who she doesn't understand as well as the jaded reader does. She has an adopted cat that comes and goes as it pleases and a
rather besotted ex-boyfriend, a writer. Another thing she doesn’t realize is
that she may have a stalker of her own.

As the book
goes on and on, Natalie does realize – very slowly – that Hollberg is exerting
subtle mental torture on Dorm on his visits and trying to manipulate her as
well. Gradually abandoning her friends, she begins to feel obliged to protect
her client from his abuser and starts fearing Hollberg. She can’t distinguish
whether the many stories he tells about Dorm’s stalking and its effects are
true or just fictional “luminous detail”, as her ex-boyfriend puts it. Natalie
decides to stand up to him, telling bizarre stories back and encouraging Dorm
to be less submissive.

Things come
to a head after about 900 pages in a sudden burst of drama followed by a great epilogue, so as I've said before you really have to be into Setz's whole world to keep going. But it is worth it. Unusually for German-language fiction at least, he
gives us a lot of detail about working life in a home for people with
disabilities. There are many, many scenes in which the staff interact with
their clients, making breakfast, playing darts, doing arts and crafts, solving
personal hygiene problems. One of Natalie’s clients, Mike, for instance, sustained brain
damage in an accident and is very anxious about seeing his wife and children.
When Natalie arrives at work late one day after Mario has been brutally
attacked – perhaps by Hollberg? – Mike’s wife has gained access to his
apartment. She is appalled by what she sees there: the walls are covered in
shocking drawings. Although we’re never told exactly what they depict, it
becomes clear to us that the wife is part of them in some way. She demands he
leaves the home, where he is stable and happy. Desperate, Natalie calls
Hollberg for advice on how to deal with the wife. He tells her how to
manipulate the woman, which works, but leaves Natalie in his debt. It’s a good
solution for Mike but not for Natalie and her other client, Dorm, who is
gradually going wild with jealousy over the relationship he imagines between
his carer and the object of all his affections.

Setz’s
writing itself is fairly straightforward and very readable. What marks it out as his
own is the wealth of thoughts and ideas he builds into his narrative. Natalie
loves bizarre stories and facts and one reason the book is so long is because
hundreds of them are included in the novel. From invisible mice as posture aids
– watch this fabulous video narrated, I think, by Setz himself – to empty spots in computer game universes to the comfort of live TV broadcasts,
Setz provides an almost constant stream of distraction throughout, similarly to
Indigo (tr. Ross Benjamin) but actually more accessible, I found.
He also manages to build tension, incredibly slowly but surely, over 1000
pages, until we readers become as obsessed as Natalie. I really enjoyed immersing myself in her world, and the slightly skewed world Setz has built around her. If you have enough time on your hands, I recommend you try it too.

Monday, 14 September 2015

Welcome to
the annual last-minute love german books overview of the German Book Prize
longlist. As tradition dictates, this is written very shortly before the
shortlist is released, based almost entirely on personal prejudice combined
with an immersive reading of the extracts published by the prize committee. So
join me on a confusing romp through slightly too little information on the
twenty titles nominated for Germany’s biggest book prize.

As usual,
reading twenty extracts makes me automatically seek out common factors. This
year we have an abundance of generations or characters rooted in family pasts –
measured here in the “grandparent factor” – and a lot of books that are either
rather on the short side or incredibly long. While short is generally good in
terms of getting translated, those great big bricks of books have a tough time
finding publishers abroad. I keep telling writers this but they generally
ignore me. For links, see my first post on the longlist.

Alina
Bronsky: Baba Dunjas letzte Liebe

Bronsky is
good at eminently readable books about quirky Russians, as evidenced by Broken
Glass Park, The Hottest Dishes of the Tartar Cuisine, and Just Call Me
Superhero (all tr. Tim Mohr). She’s not the super-snooty critics’ favourite,
however, so I don’t think she’s won any prizes so far. I’d guess she’s unlikely
to win this one either, but the novel looks like a fun read: a babushka in
nuclear-contaminated Chernovo with a great voice falls in love one last time.
I’m intrigued.

Grandparent
factor: positive, and Russian for double points

Overly long
or ridiculously short: 160 pages

Sample
sentence: I’m her nearest neighbour, only a fence divides our plots of land.
And the fence might once have been a proper one. By now it’s more an idea of a
fence.

Ralph
Dutli: Die Liebenden von Mantua

This is one
of those times when the extract tells the reader next to nothing, apart from
that the writer was really enjoying himself. Fairly baroque writing,
reminiscent of Sibylle Lewitscharoff perhaps. The language is playful but not
indigestible, but the publisher’s plot summary seems pretty off the wall – a
new religion based on the love between two Stone Age corpses founded by a
dubious count in northern Italy, anyone?

Grandparent
factor: if you count Stone Age lovers, then maybe.

Overly long
or ridiculously short: not really – 276 pages

Sample
sentence: Vergil was inescapable here, he is scattered across the peninsular
between the three lakes, he looks down as bust, relief and statue upon the
barely awakened Mantua, as though he were simultaneously ancestor, eternal
ruler and very contemporary mayor.

Jenny
Erpenbeck: Gehen, ging, gegangen

Everybody’s
favourite contemporary German writer TM is back with another
interesting-looking collage. The four-page sample contains East Germany, the
Middle Ages and the present day and several different characters, combining
history and politics in Erpenbeck’s signature style. And the subject matter: old
professor meets refugees. I’d say this might be a more intellectual version of
Chris Cleave’s The Other Hand/Little Bee, with a white middle-class character
helping white middle-class readers to relate to asylum seekers’ lives. Nothing
wrong with that, and it’s on my reading list. I’d be surprised if it didn’t
make the shortlist too. Good luck to Susan Bernofsky with translating the title
and its wordplay, though.

Grandparent
factor: not really

Overly long
or ridiculously short: neither – 352 pages

Sample
sentence: Against expectations, however, the commissioner of the fountains, the
socialist state, had suddenly gone astray after forty years, and with the state
went the associated future; only the waterfalls in staircase formation bubbled
on, bubbling even now summer after summer to spirited, almost unbelievable
heights, happy, daring children continuing to balance along them, admired by
proud, laughing parents.

Valerie
Fritsch: Winters Garten

This is a
popular one, I think. Very opulent descriptions in the extract, verging on
kitsch. It made me wonder how she squeezed a story into the 154-page book, but
apparently there is one, or the bare bones of one. Young man grows up in
verdant garden with large extended family, later leaves and finds love in
dystopian outside world, then returns to Eden facing uncertain future. I know
one translator who really adores it and it’s already sold to two countries
(although English-language rights are still available, it seems).

Grandparent
factor: oh yes

Overly long
or ridiculously short: 154 pages

Sample
sentence: On the burial mounds grew raspberries, which they stuffed greedily in
each others' mouths as though they wanted to grow very tall, and those who had
already done so carried the great-grandmother effortlessly cradled in their
arms into the house as though she were nothing but a log of wood.

Heinz
Helle: Eigentlich müssten wir tanzen

This is the
one I’m most excited about, I think. I heard Helle reading from the manuscript
two years ago and still think it’s extremely good. Dystopia with boys returned
from a weekend away to find the world destroyed without explanation. Cruelty,
stupidity – the premise seems like a Thomas Glavinic novel only I much prefer
the writing. So sinister! Serpent’s Tail are publishing his Ben Lerner-esque
previous novel as Superabundance (tr. Kári Driscoll) next spring.

Grandparent
factor: probably not

Overly long
or ridiculously short: 174 pages

Sample
sentence: A slight grey falls onto the bowling lanes though the light shafts,
there’s no electricity, the pins are gone, dangling above, perhaps, we don’t
see them.

Gertraud
Klemm: Aberland

Dark humour,
interesting idea contrasting an ageing woman and her daughter, top feminist
bonus points, and won the audience vote at the Ingeborg Bachmann Prize. Nice
long sentences but possibly low on plot. Real people are very keen, critics
less so. I'm on the fence and not all that interested.

Grandparent
factor: obviously

Overly long
or ridiculously short: 184 pages

Sample
sentence: The dress will support me in my new role; it cost 1,349 euro, but the
designers from Vittorio Missoni have put together a magical dress – it lashes
my body almost surgically into shape, and the subtly shimmering herringbone
pattern makes up for at least ten years, for example the strange bulge of flesh
that has grown out between my armpit and the top of my breast like a slug,
which can be effortlessly stowed away beneath the wide straps, and at the knees
and the back it pulls off the balancing act between showing off and concealing.

Steffen
Kopetzky: Risiko

A rather
nicely phrased piece of adventure writing, for people who like that kind of
thing. I vaguely remember enjoying his previous yarn, Der letzte Dieb.
Unpretentious and probably fun, I’d say, if it manages to avoid Orientalist
clichés. Well-researched historical novel set in 1916 crossing Syria, Iraq and
Persia but reviews have been too poor for it to make the shortlist, I suspect.

Grandparent
factor: probably not, unless you happen to be Iranian

Overly long
or ridiculously short: 732 pages

Sample
sentence: As the emir only utters a sigh, however, he pushes the tip of the
dagger so far in that Habibullah starts to bleed. He is suddenly crawling like
a beetle to get up from the ground.

Rolf
Lappert: Über den Winter

I found the
extract rather unremarkable and unrevealing; sparse language describing an
uneventful family excursion to a frozen Hamburg lake. I don’t like to
generalize but to judge by the publisher’s blurb, that’s pretty much it – man
returns to family life and discovers “the miracle of small details”. Not my cup
of tea.

Grandparent
factor: very possibly

Overly long
or ridiculously short: nope – 384 pages

Sample
sentence: On the grass of a park, someone had made a big snowman that was
hugging a tree, furniture and crates fell out of the window of a house into an
open rubbish skip, a black dog chased after a cyclist.

Inger-Maria
Mahlke: Wie Ihr wollt

I so wanted
to love this book. I’ve admired Mahlke’s writing for some time and I think
she’s as cool as a Slush Puppy. Plus the subject matter: Lady Mary Grey, Tudor heir
to the throne once described as “little, crook-backed
and very ugly”. But you know how nobody finishes reading Hilary Mantel because
those Tudors are so bloody complicated? That was exactly my problem here – too
much assumed knowledge that I didn’t have. Loved the writing but simply could
not follow the story.

Grandparent factor: Henry the Eighth!

Overly long
or ridiculously short: not really – 272 pages

Sample
sentence: Ellen wanted to dodge, bumped her head against the table top. So hard
that the jug tipped over, all her own fault for not clearing it away after
breakfast. Pale yellow, topped by greyish islands of foam, an extending tongue
of ale shot over the table towards my documents.

Ulrich
Peltzer: Das bessere Leben

Is this the
counterpart to Peltzer’s previous novel Part of the Solution (tr. Martin
Chalmers)? Hedge fund managers and an insurance salesman, former idealists,
come together in some way in this apparently highly political novel. The
characteristic detail-soaked writing makes me want to read more, at any rate,
and reminds me of a reigned-in Will Self at times.

Grandparent
factor: probably not

Overly long
or ridiculously short: a bearable 448 pages

Sample
sentence: Conquered Khartoum and sealed Gordon Pasha’s un-pretty end, to be
read of in school books and regimental chronicles, a boy in boarding-school
uniform agonizing his memory in front of the bored class… his life was
England’s glory, his death was England’s pride, but Fleming couldn’t remember
more than the last lines of Kipling’s poem (although he really did try), wordy
evocations that called no soul back to life. He drank and closed his eyes.

Peter
Richter: 89/90

Here’s the
thing about this one: although it claims to be a novel, it doesn’t feel like
one. It feels like good journalism, with witty footnotes as an added extra. An
autobiographical tale of rebellious young men in East Germany, not exactly
something that hasn’t been done before. It might end up translated, though,
because I expect the writer has good connections as a newspaper correspondent
in New York.

Grandparent
factor: probably somewhere, either a Nazi or a Stasi

Overly long
or ridiculously short: 416 pages

Sample
sentence: When the summer that was to change the world came along, I draped my
bedding so that it looked like someone was lying in it, opened the window and
jumped out into the night. That wasn’t a big deal; we lived on the upper ground
floor.

Monique
Schwitter: Eins im anderen

I
thoroughly enjoyed this book once I gave it a chance (see my review) – a woman
exploring ex-loves of all kinds, with a brave plotline that creeps up unexpectedly.
Nicely done reckoning with female life today, without notching up the drama as
a couple of the other titles on the list do.

Grandparent
factor: positive

Overly long
or ridiculously short: a pleasant 232 pages

Sample
sentence: It was planned differently. The sentence I wanted to write here was:
And then came Philipp. Actually it ought to be my husband’s turn, who
incidentally suits the name very well. But the neat chronology of men is
getting messed up; there’s a problem.

Clemens J.
Setz: Die Stunde zwischen Frau und Gitarre

This one
wins the prize for longest book on the list, and is stuffed full of odd stuff
with a very drawn-out and scary storyline. I’ll post a review very soon but the
short version is that a young woman gets a job at an assisted living facility
and has to deal with a psycho – who isn’t one of her clients. Setz has his very
own way of writing and seeing the world, and reading the book submerges you in
it for a very long time. You have to be into it to stick it out, let’s say. I did.
You can read his Indigo (tr. Ross Benjamin) in English and I hope this one will
follow – although obviously don’t hold your breath.

Grandparent
factor: negative (I checked)

Overly long
or ridiculously short: 1022 pages

Sample
sentence: The red and blue hot-air balloons were now so far away that they
looked like vitreous haze. As a child, Natalie had once discovered a magic
trick with which you could focus on all the far distant things that were
interesting and mysterious – a man with a rabbit-ears hat in a ski-lift cabin, a
peacock-ish wind-wheel on a neighbour’s balcony, a brightly coloured decoration
in a hospital window, an advertising banner towed by a glider.

Anke
Stelling: Bodentiefe Fenster

Hmm. How to
explain why I’m not a fan of this novel when so many other book bloggers are?
It was picked up on by a tabloid newspaper as another illustration of How Awful
Mothers in Prenzlauer Berg are – an easy target if ever there was one.
Actually, though, for all the protagonist’s negativity on the subject, she’s
reporting from the inside, a kind of participatory anthropology, although of
course the character is just another Prenzlauer Berg mother, albeit the kind
with less money. Maybe I’m just tired of the conversation, but I don’t feel
Stelling adds very much to it, hardly scratching the surface of all the injustices
and just laying blame at individuals’ feet.

Grandmother
factor: positive

Overly long
or ridiculously short: a readable 248 pages

Sample
sentence: I’m sitting here weeping because I can’t save my friend. Isa’s going
to turn into a wreck, she’s going to end up in the funny farm, the children
dead or in the funny farm as well or narrowly escaped, but only for the time
being, only until they start families of their own and then it’ll start all over
again.

Ilija
Trojanow: Macht und Widerstand

A fabulous
cantankerous Bulgarian in what may well be a return to form by Trojanow, loved
by all for his Richard Burton novel The Collector of Worlds (tr. Will Hobson).
It seems he has interwoven two characters on either side of the power divide in
the formerly socialist country: an officer and a dissident. Based on a great
deal of reading and interviews and including archive material, this will almost
certainly make the shortlist. Comparisons have been made to Peter Weiss – but I
still want to read it.

Grandparent
factor: probably

Overly long
or ridiculously short: 480 pages

Sample
sentence: The others shake their heads conspicuously, typical Konstantin,
always contrary, on principle, a real farce. Always has to question everything.
I know I’m hard work. I let the others talk, I hold my tongue. When the first
lunch guests dribble in we get complimented out of the café.

Vladimir
Vertlib: Lucia Binar und die russische Seele

Vertlib has
a gentle sense of humour that comes out nicely in the extract. It sounds like
the story is a variation on the “grumpy old person meets idealistic young
person” stock, featuring a Jewish grandmother (bing! double points!) and an
anti-racism activist in Vienna. Nice that this writer is getting a little more
attention.

Grandparent
factor: clearly

Overly long
or ridiculously short: 320 pages

Sample
sentence: Those two boys know I can hardly walk now. Do they think I’m still
young and dynamic like I was at sixty? Szymborska wrote a poem shortly before
her death about an ancient tortoise that dreams of dancing. When it finally
takes the risk of trying a few dance steps and twirls round on the spot, it
rolls over on its back and can’t move any more. What was the name of that poem
again?

Kai Weyand:
Applaus für Bronikowski

An
unambitious young man gets a job at a funeral parlour and tries to fulfil a dead
woman’s last wish. I don’t think I could read a whole book in this naïve
pedantic voice, but maybe that’s just me. Other people may find it funny and
it’s mercifully short.

Grandparent
factor: positive

Overly long
or ridiculously short: 188 pages

Sample
sentence: Assuming I decide on an almond crescent, but you know something about
the almond crescent that I don’t know, for example that the almond flakes
aren’t the best, then it wouldn’t be very friendly of you to keep that
knowledge to yourself. I’m asking you because you’re a qualified bakery
salesperson.

Long title,
huh? Long book, too. This is one of those very specific West German sagas that can be rather
unsexy for people from other countries. But I found the extract grotesque,
scary and rather exciting, pretty much against my will. The critics love it and
although I think it might be too difficult a read to win the prize, I’m glad to
have got a sample of Witzel’s writing. It tastes like something Willy Wonka
might have invented while in a bad mood.

Grandparent
factor: probably

Overly long
or ridiculously short: 818 pages!

Sample
sentence: I immerse the rabbit corpses in a saucepan of water so that the worms
come floating out. The factory-owner lumbers around in the corridor with a
wooden wheelbarrow. He’s come from the slate cliff, where he collected up
branches and beasts indiscriminately. Of course he doesn’t need to collect
anything. That’s why he does it.

Christine
Wunnicke: Der Fuchs und Dr. Shimamura

Based on a
real historical character, this seems to be a novel about a Japanese
neurologist who went to Europe and had a special interest in fox obsessions.
Yes. While Wunnicke does sketch an interesting character in the extract, it all
sounds rather pernickety to me. The language is nicely precise, at least.

Grandparent
factor: who knows?

Overly long
or ridiculously short: 144 pages

Sample
sentence: Dr Shimamura had four carers: Sachiko, his wife, Yukiko, her mother,
Hanako, his own mother, and a maid, whom he sometimes called Anna but more
often Luise. He had taken the latter home with him from the Kyoto asylum on his
retirement, as a souvenir, and because no one there quite knew whether she was
a patient or a nurse and no one remembered her name either.

Feridun
Zaimoglu: Siebentürmelviertel

More
baroque language, this time more baroque and in a historical novel around German emigrants in
1940s Istanbul. I’m reading it now and enjoying that language, although I
haven’t a clue whether anything is going to happen other than an endless string
of childhood and domestic incidents. Critics have generally been enthusiastic about
the sheer cheek of the thing.

Grandparent
factor: yes, a Turkish grandmother for extra points

Overly long
or ridiculously short: 800 pages

Sample
sentence: I wait for the punch, for
the children’s kicks. I wait until my bones ache from lying on the hard earth. This
is the field of our first shame. Beak-clattering from the birds nesting on the
cypress branches. Ashes in the sky, the wind-warped barn burning on the fallow
land.

If I ruled the world, I’d have
a shortlist consisting of Bronsky, Erpenbeck, Helle, Schwitter, Trojanow and
Witzel. Because they’re too long to be realistic translation material, I’m not
listing Setz and Zaimoglu, even though I think they’ll probably be on the real
shortlist. After all, I don’t rule the world.

Friday, 11 September 2015

Mädchenmeute is a book that should come with a torch attached. It's a book that will make you feel fifteen again, will get you utterly hooked, and will require reading under the covers until late at night. Hence the torch – preferably with batteries included.

The name means "pack of girls" because it's a novel about seven girls who run away from a creepy survival camp, steal a van that turns out to be full of dogs, and camp out with their new pets in a disused mine entrance in an Erzgebirge forest. Narrator Charlotte is fifteen and painfully shy but a bit of a Nancy Drew. Except that she gets distracted from the Scooby Doo-like goings on in the camp by all the running away business and doesn't solve the crime until pretty much the last pages.

Alongside the girl detective genre, Kirsten Fuchs plays on other literary precedents, and I prepared myself for the book by watching the 1963 film of Lord of the Flies with my fourteen-year-old daughter. After which we were both pretty shaken and disgusted with boys, let me tell you. Fuchs's gang of girls also spend much of the time in the forest arguing, understandably, having been complete strangers until a day previously. And one of the characters has a great dig at boys, a full-page monologue about how they always want to prove themselves but their brains aren't big enough so they end up breaking things. But, as Yvette points out, girls are much cleverer, so although they do get wilder and wilder no one gets killed in Mädchenmeute. Or do they?

Charlotte is a fabulous narrator. I bought the book on the strength of hearing Kirsten Fuchs read from it, and that voice accompanied me throughout the novel. I can't find a video of her reading the book, but if you put "Kirsten Fuchs" into YouTube you'll realize she's a very funny woman. I also went drinking with her once, which was pretty adventurous for two mums out for a night in Berlin. Anyway, we get a fifteen-year-old view of the world, cynical and naive at the same time, which is gorgeous. And also some stunning descriptions of the forest, but most of all a whole lot of very funny moments, wry observations, a first kiss that makes the kissee stupider afterwards, a bunch of great characters and an ending that made me think of The Breakfast Club. Maybe because I felt like I was fifteen again.

I told one friend I was reading it and she said a male friend of hers had said it was boring. This puzzled me for some time. How on earth could anyone find Mädchenmeute boring? My only conclusion was that this is a book proudly written for women – and girls; although published as an adult title, it's been reeling in accolades as a YA book as well. If you've never been a fifteen-year-old girl, maybe it would be boring. Poor you. The other thing I loved was Charlotte's developing relationship with her dog, Kajtek. Taking responsibility for him (and for the other girls) is what makes her grow up, as she remarks herself at one point. So yes, how could this avoid being a (yawn) coming-of-age novel, but it's done in a delightful way through the narrator's new-found feelings for others.

Oh, and did I mention that the setting is fabulous? It's all in East Germany but the girls don't really care about that because they're the wrong generation. And there are folk tales and ghost stories and natural phenomena and skinnydipping lakes and moss growing on everything and acidheads and weirdos and lovely made-up place names.

I'll try and encourage my daughter to read it. She'll probably ignore me. It has been compared to Wolfgang Herrndorf's runaway hit Tschick, so maybe translation rights will sell and English-speakers will get a chance to read it under the covers. I hope so. I think even the sense of humour would work.

Monday, 7 September 2015

Here's a book that grew and grew on me. At first glance it seems to be built around a rather anodyne premise: twelve chapters detailing twelve loves in the narrator's life, all with the names of apostles. Which raises the question of whose companions they might be, that whole "bigger than Jesus" thing all over again. But why not?

Gradually, though, Eins im Anderen becomes more complex and tangled of its own accord, the story taking hold of the narrator and giving her something of a shaking. It opens with the narrator, a writer and mother of two small boys, googling her first boyfriend. Now who hasn't done that? Mine is now in Canada, it seems; our narrator's killed himself four years previously. What starts out as an introspective project – always well written, giving us miniature stories to enjoy – gradually shifts to include the wider world. The narrator's husband, previously skulking in the background of the framework narrative, working late shifts and consulting his telephone obsessively as husbands do, butts in rather rudely before his turn to be described in the chronology of men. He's been doing something rather bad, you see, which comes as rather a surprise and upsets family life.

And from then on this ostensibly orderly list of love stories becomes a glorious mess, jumbled and chaotic and taking in other kinds of love – friendship, a kind of asexual cohabitation, an unsuitable infatuation, an affair strangely sanctioned by the man's wife, a fantasy – and our picture of the perfect mother is skewed. Things – men – she'd left out of her official life story start coming out of the woodwork, jolted back to mind by events, making the narrator look less and less saintly. And the final chapter is a reckoning with betrayal, I can only assume, an angry shout at a man who left her, emerging as the narrator finishes off her book.

Schwitter uses only one gimmick in her novel – the conceit of the book being written as we read it. Imagine all the awful clever things she could have done: different styles for different men, different tenses or voices, I don't know what else. Instead, she gives us consistently good writing as her character loses her consistency. There was one particular moment that made me smile, when the narrator reads the novel's first chapter at an event, about a third of the way in. It turns out to be a bad choice of text:

Because audiences tend to confuse a first-person narrator with the author, a tendency that grows when the author reads the first-person text aloud. (...) Possibly, my introverted, unhappy reading turns the audience's tendency to confuse the narrator with the author into a certainty that one, precisely one and only one person is standing here before them: the narrator. An woman unlucky in love. The whole reading a single drawn-out cry for love, a call for help to the men in the audience.

Isn't that great? So meta.

The book is longlisted for the German Book Prize but I don't know whether the Anglophone rule of thumb about literary prizes going to books about men will apply in this case. A very quick review of previous winners suggests the most popular focus is actually families rather than men or women on their own. That would work in Schwitter's favour – because ultimately, this is a novel about a family in which the mother has a past. Well worth reading.

Tuesday, 1 September 2015

God, lists make for such easy blogging. The "Hotlist" is a top ten of outstanding books produced by independent publishers in Switzerland, Austria and Germany. Although there is a prize in the end, awarded at the Frankfurt Book Fair, the money goes to the publisher rather than the writer and/or translator. So it's about raising the profile of these books and rewarding excellence under difficult publishing conditions. Anyway, today they released the, erm, Hotlist. Here are some links and brief descriptions of this rather diverse list.

I love this book and I feel no shame at declaring it my absolute favourite. Musings on the general crapness of paid labour, triggered by a seasonal job at the Leipzig Amazon warehouse. You may have a chance to read some of it in English soon, I hope.